STOCKHOLM/AUTHORLINK NEWS/October 7, 2010–Mario Vargas Llosa, a 74-year-old Peruvian writer, has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature. The Swedish Academy says it is honoring him "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat."

A literary giant in the Spanish-speaking world, he has written more than 30 novels, essays and plays and is the first south American writer to win the coveted prize since Colombian storyteller Gabriel Garcia Marques won n 1982. Vargas Llosa's best-selling work has been widely translated in English, French, Swedish and German. Some of his best-known works include "The Green House," "Conversation in the Cathedral," "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," "A Fish in the Water: a Memoir," "The Feast of the Goat" and "The Storyteller." He has been praised for his unblemished examination of hypocrisy, most often training an eye on Peruvian society. But he has also produced humorous work and detective stories.

Vargas Llosa, who was born in Arequipa, Peru, spent some of his early years in Bolivia but his family returned to Peru in 1946.